New Review of Critical Decisions

The book Critical Decisions: How You and Your Doctor Can Make the Right Medical Choices Together by Peter A. Ubel, MD effectively makes the case that good medical decisions require empowered patients, clinicians prepared to support them and techniques to help them communicate.[1] Better than any existing literature, this book highlights techniques and behaviors that clinicians must use to support the empowered patient, and suggests significant improvements to decision aids.

The book is informative, comprehensive, and accessible. It is an important resource for clinicians and patients who want to learn ways to better communicate to each other in making health care/medical decisions.

The first part of the book, “The Rise of the Empowered Patient,” presents the history of medical decision making — starting with ancient Greece and Hippocrates, continuing with the ethics of experimentation of the mid 20th century, and concluding with a detailed account of the seeds of the empowered patient movement starting in the 60s… (Read more at the Journal of Participatory Medicine)

About Me

I am a physician and behavioral scientist. My research and writing explore the quirks in human nature that influence our lives -- the mixture of rational and irrational forces that affect our health, our happiness, and the way our society functions. (more...)